iKnowledge

By Mike Lacelle, on January 31st, 2012

I love learning about new things, or learning even more about things I already know. Sometimes I wish I could just get away for a week or two to a cabin in the woods and sit by a fireplace in a comfortable chair with a huge library of books and just read and learn 24/7. There are many times throughout the year, especially around the beginning of new school semesters, that I go through my local colleges and universities’ part-time learning course lists and think about enrolling in one or two. But I have 2 jobs and live outseide of the city. I always tell myself that I’ll take on a course or two one day when I have less things going on.

And then I discovered iTunes U. What a great idea. It’s basically a library of free courses in various formats (video, audio, eBook) offered from educators around the world. From schools like Oxford, Harvard and Yale.

iTunes U has been around for a little while now, but they recently released the iTunes U iOS app.

The free iTunes U app gives students access to all the materials for your course in a single place. Right in the app, they can play video or audio lectures. Read books and view presentations. See a list of all the assignments for the course and check them off as they’re completed. And when you send a message or create a new assignment, students receive a push notification with the new information.

I’ve already started a list of courses I want to go through in iTunes U. And they have lots to choose from. Everything from iOS app creation to philosophy to history. I just started Harvard University’s Justice with Michael Sandel. I’m 3 “episodes” in and I’m really enjoying it and learning a lot. There’s lots of cool science courses too and I’m going to go through one of those next. And I’ve always been interested in American history. So many to choose from. My brain is a sponge and it’s ready to absorb knowledge.

I wonder if I could convince Steve to put up a course on skepticism and critical thinking on there. Looks like we’ll have to grow him yet another clone. Or will we?….